Government Case Study

Command Center Scenario: Chicago Police Department

Challenges

Information Assembly: The system needed to accommodate 16 command center officers, who all needed to access and route audio & video inputs from 50 different police system inputs and 6 Cable TV sources.

Physical Separation of Systems: For legal and security purposes, the CPIC needed to keep the various input sources from the police systems physically separated.

Integration & Control: The existing control technology was relatively limited, and different audio and video systems needed to be integrated into the system.

Simplicity: Paramount to the success of this kind of complex audio and video routing system was the need to keep its operation simple.

Support: The system had to be fail-safe, monitored remotely, and receive full support when issues arise.

System Components

Equipment Rooms

In Each of 16 Command Stations

Command Center

Results

The Q-SYS platform was able to integrate all audio inputs and outputs of each station and all external police monitoring systems while accommodating the security requirements of separating different police systems. The system used automatic gain control and noise cancellation to ensure that each source had the same volume level. They also take advantage of Q-SYS software-based acoustic echo cancellation for video conferencing.

Q-SYS allowed any of the 16 operators to be able to monitor multiple police audio channels at once via a customized Lua scripting block, which managed a complex channel attenuation scheme. The Q-SYS control engine also allowed the system to be controlled by third-party Crestron devices. The system also employed audio-based logic – for example, if no one is actively monitoring the gunshot system and an alert comes through, Q-SYS will alert other personnel via their touch screen controller.

Finally, Q-SYS allowed for remote monitoring and real-time alerts of any system issues. Tools like the Q-SYS Hover Monitor allowed system technicians to remotely listen to any workstation’s input channels and address any post-install issues that might arise.